Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article:

History

The program ran on CBS every Sunday night from
8-9 p.m. ET (originally from 9-10 p.m. ET, until March 1949), and
is one of the few entertainment shows to have been run in the same
weekly time slot on the same network for more than two decades.
Virtually every type of entertainment appeared on the show;
opera singers, popular artists, songwriters,
comedians, ballet dancers, dramatic actors
performing monologues from plays, and circus acts were regularly featured.
The format was essentially the same as vaudeville, and although vaudeville had died a
generation earlier, Sullivan presented many ex-vaudevillians on his
show.

The show
was broadcast via live television
from the CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York City, which was renamed the Ed Sullivan
Theater on the occasion of the program's 20th anniversary
in June 1968. The last Sullivan show telecast (#1071) was on
March 28, 1971 with guests Melanie,
Joanna Simon, Danny Davis and the Nashville
Brass, and Sandler and Young.
Some claim that the cancellation was a result of CBS's rural purge, but this
is highly debatable, since there was nothing "rural" about a show
that sometimes featured opera stars, ballet dancers, classical
soloists, and even dramatic actors performing excerpts from
Shakespeare. Many Broadway musical stars also performed songs from
shows they were currently appearing in. Whatever the case, Sullivan
may have also felt that it was time to retire; he died only three
years after the last Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast.

Background

Along with the new talent Sullivan booked each week, he also had
recurring characters appear many times a season, such as his
"Little Italian Mouse" puppet sidekick Topo
Gigio, who debuted April 14, 1963, and ventriloquistSeñor Wences. While most of the
episodes aired live from New York City, the show also aired live on
occasion from other nations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. For
many years, Ed Sullivan was a national event each Sunday
evening, and was the first exposure for foreign performers to the
American public.On the occasion of the show's tenth anniversary
telecast, Sullivan commented on how the show had changed during a
June 1958 interview syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise
Association (NEA):

The chief difference is mostly one of pace. In those days, we
had maybe six acts. Now we have 11 or 12. Then, each of our acts
would do a leisurely ten minutes or so. Now they do two or three
minutes. And in those early days I talked too much. Watching these
kines I cringe. I look up at me talking
away and I say "You fool! Keep quiet!" But I just keep on talking.
I've learned how to keep my mouth shut.

The show enjoyed phenomenal popularity in the 1950s and early
1960s. As had occurred with Amos 'n
Andy on the radio in the early 1930s, the family ritual of
gathering around the television set to watch Ed Sullivan became
almost a U.S. cultural universal. Ed Sullivan was regarded as a
kingmaker, and performers considered an appearance on his program
as a guarantee of stardom. The show's iconic status is illustrated
by a song from the 1960 musical Bye
Bye Birdie. In the song "Hymn for a Sunday Evening," a
family of viewers expresses their regard for the program in
worshipful tones.

In 1965, CBS started televising the programs in compatible color,
as all three major networks began to switch to 100 percent color
prime time schedules. CBS had once backed its own color system,
developed by Peter Goldmark, and
resisted using RCA's compatible process until that year.

In the late 1960s, Sullivan remarked that his program was waning as
the decade went on. He realized that to keep viewers, the best and
brightest in entertainment had to be seen, or else the viewers were
going to keep on changing the channel. Along with declining
viewership, Ed Sullivan attracted a higher median age for
the average viewer (which most sponsors found undesirable) as the
seasons went on. These two factors were the reason the show was
canceled by CBS after the end of the 1970-1971 season. Because
there was no notice of cancellation, Sullivan's landmark program
ended without a series finale. Sullivan would produce one-off
specials for CBS until his death in 1974.

Many kinescopes and tapes still exist. In
the 1990s, performances were repackaged as The Best of the Ed
Sullivan Show and Ed Sullivan - Rock & Roll
Classics in syndication
and on the VH1 and TV
Landcable channels. From 2001
through 2004, PBS stations across the U.S. aired edited versions of
The Ed Sullivan Show (usually airing two 30-minute programs
back-to-back). These were produced by WQED Multimedia in
Pittsburgh. Since then, CBS has reacquired the rights to the show,
and rebroadcasts them on its Web
site.

Famous performances

The Ed
Sullivan Show is especially known to the WWII and "baby boom"
generations for airing breakthrough performances by Elvis Presley, The
Beatles, African-American
artists, and performances from Broadway shows by
their original cast members.

Elvis Presley

On September 9, 1956, Presley made his first appearance on The
Ed Sullivan Show (after earlier appearances on shows hosted by
the Dorsey Brothers, Milton Berle, and Steve Allen) even though Sullivan had
previously vowed never to allow the performer on his show.
According to biographer Michael David Harris, "Sullivan signed
Presley when the host was having an intense Sunday-night rivalry
with Steve Allen. Allen had the singer
on July 1 and trounced Sullivan in the ratings. When asked to
comment, the CBS star said that he wouldn't consider presenting
Presley before a family audience. Less than two weeks later he
changed his mind and signed a contract. The newspapers asked him to
explain his reversal. 'What I said then was off the reports I'd
heard. I hadn't even seen the guy. Seeing the kinescopes, I don't
know what the fuss was all about. For instance, the business about
rubbing the thighs. He rubbed one hand on his hip to dry off the
perspiration from playing his guitar.' "

Sullivan's reaction to Presley's performance on the Milton Berle
Show was, "I don't know why everybody picked on Presley, I thought
the whole show was dirty and vulgar."

Elvis mythology states that Sullivan censored Presley by only
shooting him from the waist up. Sullivan may have helped create the
myth when he told TV Guide, "as for his gyrations, the whole thing
can be controlled with camera shots." In truth Presley's whole body
was shown in the first and second shows.

At the
time Presley was filming Love Me Tender so Sullivan's
producer Marlo Lewis flew to Los Angeles, California to supervise the Hollywood telecast from CBS Television
City.Sullivan, however, was not able to host his
show in New York
City because he was recovering from a near fatal
automobile accident.Charles
Laughton guest-hosted in Sullivan's place. Laughton appears in
front of plaques with gold records and states, "These gold records,
four of them... are a tribute to the fact that four of his
recordings have sold, each sold, more than a million copies. And
this, by the way, is the first time in record making history that a
singer has hit such a mark in such a short time. ... And now, away
to Hollywood to meet Elvis Presley."

However, according to Greil Marcus,
Laughton was the main act of Sullivan's show. "Presley was the
headliner, and a Sullivan headliner normally opened the show, but
Sullivan was burying him. Laughton had to make the moment
invisible: to act as if nobody was actually waiting for anything.
He did it instantly, with complete command, with the sort of
television presence that some have and some — Steve Allen, or Ed
Sullivan himself — don’t."

Once on camera, Elvis cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Mr
Laughton, ladies and gentlemen. Wow”, and wiped his brow. “This is
probably the greatest honor I’ve ever had in my life. Ah. There’s
not much I can say except, it really makes you feel good. We want
to thank you from the bottom of our heart. And now..." "Don't Be Cruel," which was, after a short
introduction by Elvis, followed by "Love Me Tender." According to Elaine Dundy, Presley sang "Love Me Tender"
"straight, subdued and tender ... – a very different Elvis from the
one in the Steve Allen Show three months before".

When the camera returns to Laughton, he states, “Well, well, well
well well. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis Presley. And Mr. Presley, if
you are watching this in Hollywood, and I may address myself to
you. It has been many a year since any young performer has captured
such a wide, and, as we heard tonight, devoted audience.”

160 px

Elvis's second set in the show consisted of "Ready Teddy" and a
short on air comment to Sullivan, "Ah, Mr Sullivan. We know that
somewhere out there you are looking in, and, ah, all the boys and
myself, and everybody out here, are looking forward to seeing you
back on television." Next, Elvis declares, "Friends, as a great
philosopher once said, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog...,' " as he launches into a
short (1:07) version of the song.

160 px

According to Marcus, "For the first of his two appearances that
night, as a performer Elvis had come on dressed in grandma’s
nightgown and nightcap." Concerning the singer's second set in the
show, the author adds that there were "Elvis, Scotty Moore on
guitar, Bill Black on stand-up bass, D. J. Fontana on drums, three
Jordanaires on their feet, one at a piano. They were shown from
behind; the camera pulled all the way back. They went into 'Ready
Teddy.' It was Little Richard’s most
thrilling record," however, "there was no way Elvis was going to
catch him, but he didn’t have to — the song is a wave and he rode
it. Compared to moments on the Dorsey shows, on the Berle show, it
was ice cream — Elvis’s face unthreatening, his legs as if in casts
..." When "he sang Little Richard’s 'Reddy Teddy' and began to move
and dance, the camera pulled in, so that the television audience
saw him from the waist up only."

Although Laughton was the main star and there were seven other acts
on the show, Elvis was on camera for more than a quarter of the
time allotted to all acts. The show was viewed by a record 60
million people which at the time was 82.6% of the television
audience and the largest single audience in television history. "In
the New York Times," however, "Jack Gould began his review
indignantly: Elvis Presley had 'injected movements of his tongue
and indulged in wordless singing that were singularly distasteful.'
Overstimulating the physical impulses of the teenagers was 'a gross
national disservice.'"

Second and third appearances

160 px

Sullivan hosted a second appearance by Presley on October 28 later
the same year. Elvis performed "Don't Be
Cruel," then "Love Me
Tender." Sullivan then addressed the audience as he stood
beside Elvis, who began shaking his legs, eliciting screams from
the audience. By the time Sullivan turned his head, Elvis was
standing motionless. After Presley left the stage, Sullivan stated,
"I can’t figure this darn thing out. You know. He just does is this
and everybody yells." Elvis appeared a second time in the show and
sang "Love Me." Later on, he sang a nearly
four minute long version of "Hound
Dog" and was shown in full the entire song.

For the third and final appearance on January 6, 1957, Presley
performed a medley of "Hound Dog,"
"Love Me Tender," and
"Heartbreak Hotel," followed by a
full version of "Don't Be Cruel." For
a second set later in the show he did "Too Much" and "When My Blue
Moon Turns to Gold Again". For his last set he sang "Peace in the Valley." According to
Sullivan’s co-producer Marlo Lewis, the
rumor had it that "Elvis has been hanging a small soft-drink bottle
from his groin underneath his pants, and when he wiggles his leg it
looks as though his pecker reaches down to his knee!" Therefore, it
was decided to shoot the singer only from the waist up during his
performance. Although much has been made of the fact that Elvis was
shown only from the waist up, except for the short section of
"Hound Dog," all of the songs on
this show were ballads. "Leaving behind the bland clothes he had
worn on the first two shows," Greil Marcus says, Elvis "stepped out
in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the
make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the
overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik,
with all stops out. That he did so in front of the Jordanaires, who
this night appeared as the four squarest-looking men on the planet,
made the performance even more potent." Sullivan praised Elvis at
the end of the show, saying "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've
never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than
we've had with you.... You're thoroughly all right."

Years later, Sullivan "tried to sign the singer up again... He
phoned Presley's manager, Col. Tom Parker, and asked about a price.
Parker came up with a list of instructions and conditions and after
hearing the demands Sullivan said, 'Give Elvis my best—and my
sympathy,' and he hung up." The singer never again appeared in
Sullivan's show, although in February 1964 at the start of the
first of three broadcasts featuring the Beatles (see below),
Sullivan announced that a telegram had been
received from Presley and Parker wishing the British group
luck.

The Beatles

In late
1963 Sullivan and his entourage were at Heathrow and witnessed how The
Beatles fans' greeted the group on their return from Stockholm,
where they have performed a television show as warmup band to local
star Lill Babs. Sullivan was
intrigued, telling his entourage it was the same thing as Elvis all
over again. He initially offered Beatles manager Brian Epstein top dollar for a single show but
the Beatles manager had a better idea - he wanted exposure for his
clients: the Beatles would instead appear three times on the show,
at bottom dollar, but receive top billing and two spots (opening
and closing) on each show.

The Beatles appeared on three consecutive Sundays in February 1964
to great anticipation and fanfare as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had
swiftly risen to #1 in the charts. Their first appearance on
February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture and
the beginning of the British
Invasion in music. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million
viewers, at the time a record for US television, and was
characterised by an audience composed largely of screaming
hysterical teenage girls in tears. The Beatles followed Ed's show
opening intro, performing "All My
Loving", "Till There Was You"
which featured the names of the group members superimposed on
closeup shots, including the famous "Sorry girls, he's married"
caption on John Lennon, and "She Loves You". They returned later in the
programme to perform "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold
Your Hand".

The
following week's show was transmitted from Miami Beach where Muhammed Ali was
in training for his return bout with Sonny
Liston. The occasion was used by both camps for
publicity. On the evening of the television show (February 16) a
crush of people nearly prevented the band from making it onstage. A
wedge of policemen were needed and the band began playing "From Me to You" only seconds after reaching
their instruments. They continued with "This
Boy," and "All My Loving" and
returned later to close the show with "I Saw Her Standing There"
and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

They were shown on tape February 23 (this appearance had been taped
earlier in the day on February 9 before their first live
appearance). They followed Ed's intro with "Twist and Shout" and "Please Please Me" and closed the show once
again with "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Although the appearances by The Beatles and Elvis are considered
the most famous rock and roll performances on Ed Sullivan,
several months before Elvis debuted, Sullivan invited Bill Haley & His Comets to
perform their then-current hit "Rock Around the Clock" in early August
1955. This was later recognized by CBS and others (including music
historian Jim Dawson in his book on "Rock
Around the Clock") as the first performance of a rock and roll song
on a national television program.

African-American artists

In an era when very few opportunities existed for African-American performers to appear on
national television, Sullivan was a staunch supporter and champion
of black talent. He successfully launched the careers of many
performers of color by presenting them to a nationwide TV audience
and ignored the criticism. In an NEA interview, Sullivan
commented:

"The most important thing [during the first ten years of the
program] is that we've put on everything but bigotry. When the show first started in '48, I had a
meeting with the sponsors. There were some Southern dealers present and they
asked if I intended to put on Negroes. I said yes. They said I
shouldn't, but I convinced them I wasn't going to change my mind.
And you know something? We've gone over very well in the South.
Never had a bit of trouble."

However, Sullivan featured "rockers", and gave prominence to black
musicians, on his show "not without censorship." For instance, he
scheduled Fats Domino "at the show's end
in case he had to cancel a guest – a year later he would do just
that to Sam Cooke, actually cutting him
off in the middle of You Send
Me. Aware that many white adults considered Domino a
threat, Sullivan hid his band behind a curtain, reducing the number
of black faces. He presented Fats alone at his piano singing
the Tin Pan
Alley ballad, as if he were a young Nat 'King' Cole or Fats
Waller", and he "had Fats stand up during the last verse of the
song to reveal his pudgy figure."

Broadway

The show
is also noteworthy for showcasing performances from numerous
classic Broadwaymusicals of the
era. These include:

Most of these artists performed in the same makeup and costumes that they
wore in the shows, often providing the only visual recordings of
these legendary performances by the original cast members. Many
have been compiled and released on DVD as
The Best of Broadway Musicals - Original Cast Performances from
The Ed Sullivan Show.

Mental illness program

In that same 1958 NEA interview, Sullivan noted his pride about the
role that the show had had in improving the public's understanding
of mental illness. Sullivan
considered his May 17, 1953 telecast to be the single most
important episode in the show's first decade. During that show, a
salute to the popular Broadway director Joshua Logan, the two men were watching in the
wings, and Sullivan asked Logan how he thought the show was doing.
According to Sullivan, Logan told him that the show was dreadfully
becoming "another one of those and-then-I-wrote shows"; Sullivan
asked him what he should do about it, and Logan volunteered to talk
about his experiences in a mental institution.

Sullivan took him up on the offer, and in retrospect believed that
several advances in the treatment of mental illness could be
attributed to the resulting publicity, including the repeal of a
Pennsylvania law about the treatment of the mentally ill and the
granting of funds for the construction of new psychiatric hospitals.

Controversies

On November 20, 1955, African-American rock 'n' roll singer and
guitarist Bo Diddley appeared on The
Ed Sullivan Show only to infuriate him ("I did two songs and
he got mad"). Diddley had been asked to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit "Sixteen Tons". But when he appeared on stage,
he sang his #1 R&B hit "Bo
Diddley." Diddley later recalls, "Ed Sullivan says to me in
plain words: 'You are the first black boy - quote - that ever
double crossed me!' I was ready to fight, because I was a
little young dude off the streets of Chicago, an' him callin' me
'black' in them days was as bad as sayin' 'nigger'. My manager says
to me 'That’s Mr Sullivan!' I said: 'I don’t give a shit about Mr
Sullivan, [h]e don't talk to me like that!' An' so he told me, he
says, 'I'll see that you never work no more in show business.
You'll never get another TV show in your life!' " Indeed, Diddley
seems to have been banned from further appearances, as "the
guitarist never did appear on The Ed Sullivan Show
again."

On October 18, 1964, Jackie Mason
allegedly gave Sullivan the finger on
air. A tape of the incident shows Mason doing his stand-up comedy
act and then looking toward Sullivan, commenting that Sullivan was
signaling him. Sullivan was reportedly telling Mason to wrap it up,
since CBS was about to cut away to show a speech by President
Lyndon Johnson. Mason began working
his own fingers into his act and pointed toward Sullivan with his
middle finger slightly separated. After Mason left the stage, the
camera then cut to a visibly angry Sullivan. Sullivan argued with
Mason backstage, then terminated his contract. Mason denied
knowingly giving Sullivan the finger and later filed a libel suit. Sullivan publicly apologized to Mason when
he appeared on the show two years later. At that time, Mason opened
his monologue by saying "it is great to see all of you in person
again." Mason dropped the lawsuit, but never appeared on the show
again.

Bob Dylan was slated to make his first
nationwide television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 12,
1963, and intended to perform "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues," a
song he wrote lampooning the John
Birch Society and the red-hunting paranoia associated with it.
During the afternoon rehearsal that day, CBS officials told Dylan
they had deemed the song unacceptable for broadcast and wanted him
to substitute another. "No; this is what I want to do," Dylan
responded. "If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the
show." He then left the studio, walking out on the stint.

The Doors were notorious for their
appearance on the show. CBS network censors demanded that lead
singer Jim Morrison change the lyrics
to their hit single Light My Fire by
altering the line, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher," before the
band performed the song live on September 17, 1967. The line was
changed to, "Girl, we couldn't get much better". However, Morrison
sang the original line, and on live television with no delay, CBS
was powerless to stop it. A furious Sullivan refused to shake the
band members' hands, and they were never invited back to the show.
According to Ray Manzarek, the band was
told "Mr. Sullivan liked you boys. He wanted you on six more times.
... You'll never do the Sullivan show again"; Morrison replied with
glee, "We just did the Sullivan show."—at
the time, an appearance was a hallmark of success.Manzarek claims the band agreed with the producer beforehand
but had no intention of altering the line.

In contrast, the Rolling Stones were
instructed to change the title of their "Let's Spend the Night
Together" single for the band's January 15, 1967 appearance.
The band complied, with Mick Jagger
ostentatiously rolling his eyes heavenward whenever he reached the
song's one-night-only, clean refrain, "Let's spend some time
together". However, Diana Ross & the
Supremes, frequent guests on Sullivan's show, performed their
then-release and eventual controversial #1 hit song "Love Child" on Sullivan's show, but
nothing about its title or its content about a woman in poverty
having a child out of wedlock seemed to faze Ed or its producers,
or the network.

Parodies

The show's immense popularity has been the target of numerous
parodies. These include:

Rain: The Beatles
Experience opens their concerts with prerecorded footage of a
man doing an intentionally poor Sullivan impression in black and
white and then introducing the band, which plays the first part of
the show with an exact recreation of the set the Beatles used.

The Tom Hanks-directed film
That Thing You Do! has
the Beatles-esque band The Wonders performing in The Hollywood
Television Showcase, complete with a caption over the band's
lead singer similar to Lennon's "Sorry Girls! He's Engaged!"
The scene
was shot at CBS
Television City in Los Angeles, which Sullivan used for his West
Coast shows.

There have been various parodies of the show on YouTube, one of them being Ed Sullivan appearing on
a FinallyFast.com ad.

The 1960s animated television series The Flintstones once featured a parody
of Sullivan as "Ed Sulleyrock/Sulleystone."